Interaction between Obama and Ayers
Ayers and Dohrn hosted a "meet-and-greet" political meeting for Obama at their home in the Hyde Park section of Chicago, where the Ayers and the Obamas lived. (The meeting has also been called a fundraising event.[7]) It was at this meeting that then State Senator Alice Palmer introduced Barack Obama as her chosen candidate for the 1996 Democratic primary.[8] Although the exact date of the meeting is not known, it was sometime in the second half of 1995, according to Ben Smith, a reporter for The Politico.[4] Chicagoan Maria Warren wrote in 2005 on her Musings & Migraines blog: "When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the livingroom of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They were launching him — introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread."[4]
Obama served as president of the board of directors for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a large education-related nonprofit organization that Ayers was instrumental in starting. The board disbursed grants to schools and raised private matching funds while Ayers worked with the operational arm of the effort. Both attended some board meetings in common starting in 1995,[9][10] retreats, and at least one news conference together as the education program started. They continued to attend meetings together during the 1995-2001 period when the program was operating.[10]
Obama and Ayers served together for three years on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty foundation established in 1941. Obama had joined the nine-member board in 1993, and had attended a dozen of the quarterly meetings together with Ayers in the three years up to 2002, when Obama left his position on the board,[1] which Ayers chaired for two years.[11] Laura S. Washington, chairwoman of the Woods Fund, said the small board had a collegial "friendly but businesslike" atmosphere, and met four times a year for a half-day, mostly to approve grants.[2] The two also appeared together on academic panel discussions, including a 1997 University of Chicago discussion on juvenile justice. They again appeared in 2002 at an academic panel co-sponsored by the Chicago Public Library.[1] One panel discussion in which they both appeared was organized by Obama's wife, Michelle.[12] Ayers donated $200 to Obama's 2001 state senate campaign.[13]
In 2008, a spokesman for the Obama campaign said the last time Obama and Ayers had seen each other was when Obama was biking in the neighborhood in 2007 and crossed paths with Ayers. The spokesman said "The suggestion that Ayers was a political adviser to Obama or someone who shaped his political views is patently false".[14]
[edit] Presidential campaign issue
Obama's contacts with Ayers had been common knowledge in Chicago for years.[15] Mainstream British news organizations and blogs began covering the matter in the context of the 2008 Presidential campaign beginning with conservative British writer Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail in early February, 2008.[16][15][17]
The connection was soon picked up by blogs and newspapers in the United States, including the Huffington Post.[18] In a February 15, 2008 article, a Bloomberg L.P. reporter quoted Obama's rival, Hillary Clinton, who stated that the Republican Party might use the supposed connection with Ayers to discredit Obama if he were chosen as the nominee of the Democratic Party.
